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I got 8 items listing this morning between kid duties and taxi service. Multiples but better than none. I think my Ebay store had a thick layer of dust on it. Quite a few 16 month banners going on :/ Next week we have company coming. Ugh.
Total Items in Store: 273 Ebay, 40 Mercari (deactivated half of the week)
Items Sold: 7 Ebay, 0 Mercari
Gross Sales: $275
Cost of Items Sold: $57
Highest Price Sold: $60 (Set of Dansk salad plates, paid 5.99 GW)
Average Price Sold: $39
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $20 on two new items
Number of items listed this week: 0Grateful for the sales, as I have been tied up and not listing for weeks. Most sales were part of my dwindling RA inventory. I’m very grateful for Ebay reselling. It started out as “extra” money that I initially plowed into RA inventory, but I use it to pay for expenses and quarterlies now.
Kinda tempted to clean house quite a bit when I can return to listing. I need to go back and clean up some shipping choices. I did already take off free shipping except under 8 ounces before the new rates took effect but I have some parcel select, smartpost, and whatnot to remove. I had overnight as well as the last option in case it helped with Guaranteed Delivery ranking but I really don’t think it did. I paid over a thousand in free (mostly first class) shipping last year. That’s a lot compared to my profit. Unfortunately hard to tell if I would have sold those items anyway but probably since my RA stuff is discontinued and my vintage items don’t usually have a ton of competition. As a buyer I do like my free shipping. As a seller I’m not comfortable contributing over like three bucks since I’ve got best offer on everything.
Regarding the Ebay preliminary spring update, I hope it is not a matter of good news, followed by the bad news (fee increases). Maybe so if that letter from the activist investor was just a kick in the butt and they are trying to control platform leakage by appealing to sellers and fixing things. I guess we will find out soon. I’m very happy and not at all surprised that they are not going forward with the product pages into my categories of new and used items. If they are going to bury my stuff I want it to be the old fashioned best match way, LOL. Also I’m looking for lazy convenience buyers coming from Pinterest who don’t comparison shop. It looks like they are getting Google to recognize them based on item specifics without requiring a product page for everything, so yeah! for that. Maybe they just hired some more competent tech people. After being exposed to Mercari listing, I also like simplification regarding the length of GTC listings. Hopefully more listing simplification will follow! Have a great week!
I had a wonderful getaway weekend with close friends. Back to reality now with a lot of non-Ebay extras going on, including more bookkeeping and taxes for Ebay. So, zero listed last week.
LOL I have this too. Ebay really should try hard to minimize embarrassing tech issues.
Total Items in Store: 298 Ebay, about 40 Mercari
Items Sold: 3 Ebay, 2 Mercari
Gross Sales: $69 Ebay, $44 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $19 + $6 free shipping + one item ours
Highest Price Sold: $38 Ebay, midcentury salad plate set (paid $7 indy thrift)
Average Price Sold: $22-23 across platforms
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $4
Number of items listed this week: 0Happy 400! Thank you J&R for your consistent effort on the quality podcast and forum. I really appreciate being able to learn from others and share re my hobby now turned small business. Unfortunately, there are not many others out there making great content. A whole lot of get rick quick ads, jabber, whining, and click bait. I also really appreciate that you educate encourage others to honestly pay their taxes on reselling income and remind all that we all reap some of the benefits of it, even if we don’t agree with some things going on. I will certainly now leave that topic right there.
I really like doing my own taxes because it helps me understand how it works. It’s very, very different for us this year than last. The business deductions will come into play though an accountant friend of mine said to be cautious about storage space and I need to look further into that. Also most of the time is spent on the bookkeeping rather than the tax preparation work. Turbotax did pretty well predicting my new and much higher quarterlies so hopefully they are up to speed.
Dreadful sales but I’ve seen it before in February and I just simply haven’t had time to list. It’s weird not to have to go to the post office or pack in the morning. I look forward to a rainy school day off to sit and list by the fire without going to the office. Just not in the cards lately. Have a great week trash elves!
Well, very busy life outside Ebay. I’m doing some heavy duty parenting, working on tax records, helping my dad prepare to sell his house and move here, and also I have some school fundraising volunteering coming up plus a fun and overdue girls’ weekend this coming weekend in Scottsdale. Soo, just filling orders and they are few and far between. Nothing to ship from the weekend. I listed zero items this week. Sigh. At least I’m not shopping. Missed a church sale this weekend.
@A, I agree with that – getting the stuff out of your living and processing place. Either just moving it or tackling it. Then, I like the Almasty method above, switching from type to type to keep it interesting. It also helps me realize what type of items I don’t like to list or that are most time intensive.
@T I’ve done our stuff (mostly clothing) on Mercari because i hate clothing too. It’s super fast to list vs Ebay, they discourage returns, and I’m willing too mark it down and move it quickly. It also keeps the personal sals out of my Ebay store. Good luck with your piles. I envy the people with small ones.
Oh no! You are reminding me of someone trying to hold back the tide at the beach. Another wave of stuff rolls in. You and I are bringing up the rear of this challenge, but we’ve been talking finances at home so I’m getting really motivated!
I started on TurboTax yesterday. It looks like they did a pretty decent job in April of estimating my quarterlies under the new tax law thank goodness. They asked me if my business was a qualified trade or business, they didn’t tell me based on the code. Haven’t gotten the prompt yet for the reselling code. Interesting…
@Retro That’s awesome. I’m working on our taxes now and will need to prepare an ending inventory. But, we are feeling crunched with a lot of atypical 2018 expenses and home improvement that just added up so I’m getting highly motivated to list again and resist shopping. I would love to turn that stuff in my garage into profit right about now. I think you had the child who was ill, hope you are all ok and Ebay might cut you a break if you email them?
@Amatino, great job sorting. You are dealing with a lot of quantity! I think tackling by type will help you list faster.That was my original attitude but I’m not optimistic. At worst we will eat $615 we don’t owe but it was 15+ hours of my time. It took over an hour on hold to leave a message for the examiner which would go unanswered. Techinally they are “required” to answer within 3 days or a manager in 5. Tempting to petition tax court on principle but would be even more of my time.
In July (immediately after audit) I sent the payment for the older child and the receipts to prove we should get a credit for the younger child. With the shut down we are still waiting for the verdict on child #2 credit. Which we paid but appealed. It took them until October to let us know by mail they were backed up. I heard on the news that after the shut down they returned to 5 million pieces of unopened mail.
Thanks for clarifying that last point. Since most of my purchases are behind me and what I do list generally sells within a year or two, so I prefer your method.
In this case, what it cost me was a lot of my time and frustration but not much in interest. It wasn’t complicated, the IRS just wouldn’t return calls or take action after I sent the receipts and payment but you can’t call the examiner directly. We tried the taxpayer advocate at the end. What a joke. They called our evening number once instead of the cell we left, then sent an undated letter that we were unreachable by phone. Refused to return messages. I feel for the people who have bigger issues to tackle with them. If I ever have another issue I will be way more proactive instead of waiting months for them to reply. That was nieve.
